I Know Permanence
a found poem from Virginia Woolf’s ‘The Waves’

I am feeling a sense of infinite darkness
of unlighted sky and time.

I call for golden light but not a flicker
crowns this avenue I walk down.
It has gone.

My brain seems a strip of cloud
my mind streaming with sudden random abysses
one following another.

What can I do? I have lost
my grip on the past
on feeling light.

How strange, this poem
how whirling.

Nazifa Islam grew up in Novi, Michigan. Her poems have appeared in Boston Review, Gulf Coast, The Account, and Beloit Poetry Journal among other publications, and her poetry collection Searching for a Pulse (2013) was released by Whitepoint Press. She earned her MFA at Oregon State University. You can find her @nafoopal.

Image by Mark Maguire